The Man Who Wasn’t There

The Man Who Wasn’t There

2DCS15
Director:Joel Coen
Cast:Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, James Gandolfini
Premiere:6. June 2002
Length:119 minutes
Genre:Drama, Crime

Director: Joel Coen  •  Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, James Gandolfini, Katherine Borowitz

Like Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn’t There carries the traces of the novels of James M. Cain, an author who was interested not in underworld criminals but in ordinary people with ordinary jobs and their domestic melod-ramas that turn into crime stories through chance encounters. Such is the case with a taciturn, boring barber (Billy Bob Thornton) whose desire for the American Dream results in crime and who, ironically, is tried for so-mething he didn’t do. In addition to literary sources and classic film noirs (the distinctive black-and-white styli-zation, the protagonist’s voiceover), the Coens reference Hitchcock’s film Shadow of a Doubt (1943) through the setting (Santa Rosa) and early 1950s science fiction films through the evocation of the mindset of the inhabitants of American suburbia in the post-war period (assumed war heroism, existential angst, the threat of atomic war, fear of invasion from outer space).

Length: 119 min

Year: 2001
Local premiere date: 6. June 2002
World premiere date: 2. November 2001

Country of origin:

  • United states of America

Director: Joel Coen  •  Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, James Gandolfini, Katherine Borowitz

Like Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn’t There carries the traces of the novels of James M. Cain, an author who was interested not in underworld criminals but in ordinary people with ordinary jobs and their domestic melod-ramas that turn into crime stories through chance encounters. Such is the case with a taciturn, boring barber (Billy Bob Thornton) whose desire for the American Dream results in crime and who, ironically, is tried for so-mething he didn’t do. In addition to literary sources and classic film noirs (the distinctive black-and-white styli-zation, the protagonist’s voiceover), the Coens reference Hitchcock’s film Shadow of a Doubt (1943) through the setting (Santa Rosa) and early 1950s science fiction films through the evocation of the mindset of the inhabitants of American suburbia in the post-war period (assumed war heroism, existential angst, the threat of atomic war, fear of invasion from outer space).

Year: 2001
Local premiere date: 6. June 2002
World premiere date: 2. November 2001

Country of origin:

  • United states of America